


when the lights are soft and low

by elizajane



Series: On the Strength of the Evidence [6]
Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Consensual Infidelity, F/F, F/M, Ficlet, M/M, Non-Chronological, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 09:46:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7797028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cathy and Caro share a cigarette. </p><p>Takes place the day after Geordie and Sidney's first kisses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the lights are soft and low

Cathy descends the stairs from putting Davie down and checking in on the girls -- Esme is reading, Ivy and Dora have already fallen asleep -- to find Caro out on the back stoop with a half-finished cigarette in one hand, considering the garden shed.

Cathy eases herself down beside Caro, leaning into her, and Caro hands off the cigarette in silence. Cathy doesn’t smoke as much as she used to, but this has been a hell of a day. So she takes a drag on the cigarette, holding in the smoke and savoring the taste before letting out her breath and passing it back to Caro.

“Well,” Caro says to the garden.

“That was kind of you, to offer them the boat,” Cathy says. A typical Caro gesture -- slightly flamboyant, awkwardly generous.

Caro snorts, pushing her hair back from her face with a thumb as she holds the cigarette between her fingers. “If I hadn’t offered them _Natalie_ they’d have been arrested by one of Geordie’s own beat constables inside of an hour for looking at one another.”

It’s a joke and also not a joke. They both know Geordie and Sidney will need to be careful in a way that hasn’t been necessary for the two of them. At least since Caro came into her inheritance. The possibility of imprisonment is a new worry for their queer little family carry. But, Cathy thinks, casting her mind back to the afternoon’s conversation on the riverbank -- the way Geordie held himself carefully _apart_  from Sidney in front of the children and the way Sidney carefully _didn’t look back_ \-- it’s a risk they need to take.

She wonders, momentarily, if it makes her a poor mother that this has never been a question for her: that both she and Geordie need a happiness that doesn’t begin and end with the children. That, when the choice is set before her, she doesn’t hesitate encouraging her own husband to risk scandal or imprisonment in pursuit of a pleasure most of their neighbors would consider sick -- even dangerous.

“Still,” Cathy said. “It was kind.”

“We should think about a second flat, maybe in London,” Caro says.

“And what would the neighbors think, then, when they only ever saw the two of them or the two of us coming and going, and the flat standing empty three weeks of every month?”

“It would have to be in the right part of London,” is Caro’s response. Cathy knows keeping a third residence -- fourth if you count the vicarage, though that’s Church of England property -- would put a strain on even Caroline’s finances. But for the moment she lets Caro dream.

They finish the cigarette together, Cathy stubbing out the end on the slate of the step before she dusts her hands and stands to reach out a hand for Caro. “Come then,” she says. “Let’s have a cuppa and then up to bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the 1877 ballad [In the Gloaming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek5K4ORWzrk) by Annie Fortescue Harrison and Meta Orred:
> 
>  _In the gloaming, oh my darling_  
>  When the lights are soft and low  
> And the quiet shadows, falling,  
> Softly come and softly go
> 
> Caro's houseboat, the _Natalie_ is named after [Natalie Clifford Barney](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Clifford_Barney) (1876-1972) a poet and out lesbian.


End file.
